Language Log

Today's xkcd: Mouseover title: "Other numbers are largely unaffected, but anyone using '4' for their certificate key is urged to upgrade to '5'."

The Weather Channel recently published a story about the value of duct tape in keeping out flood water: "Duct tape kept out more flood water than sandbags in laboratory tests".

Norbert Wiener's 1950 book The Human Use of Human Beings makes some uncannily accurate predictions, e.g.

Following up on yesterday's "Singularities" post, today's SMBC: Mouseover title: "Meanwhile the Engineers are just lighting themselves on fire to see what happens."

The OED gives citations for singularity going back to the 14th century, e.g. this example from 1398 in the sense "The fact or condition of being alone or apart from others; solitariness": Men vsyd to ete togyders in open place, leest syngularite schuld br…

"AI is doing job interviews now—but candidates say they’d rather risk staying unemployed than talk to another robot", Fortune 8/2/2025: AI is replacing human hiring managers in job interviews—and candidates are pushing back.

Mayur Naik has invented "MathDuels: A Self-Play Benchmark That Grows": … in which models occupy dual roles: each authors math problems under adversarial prompting and solves problems authored by every other participant.

Some of the comments on "Filthy comfortable" (10/9/2026) related to the issue of an adjective being used as an adverbial intensifier, which is a fairly common though always irregular development.

Wikipedia’s article on Benjamin Franklin starts this way: Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath active as a physicist, philosopher, statesman and inventor.

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Memorial Service for Victor Mair, where many of his relatives, friends, students, and colleagues told stories about Victor and his influence on their lives.

A linguistically striking ad:  There's another one here, and the slogan alone also appears in text form.

Last Tuesday's post "Pneumatic, pneumonic, whatever" was based on a New York Post headline announcing that "Trump calls reported pneumatic plague outbreak ‘big problem for Russia’".

Beth Simone Noveck, "How AI can be good for democracy", NYT 10/6/2026: Governments can also use their enormous purchasing power to demand more from A.I. companies and to build more A.I. with them.

New information about the Memorial Service for Victor Mair, Saturday 10/10 from 2:00 to 5:00pm: For those who can't attend in person at Swarthmore Friends Meeting (12 Whittier Place, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania), it will be available here through Zoom.

"Trump calls reported pneumatic plague outbreak ‘big problem for Russia’: ‘The microbes and the germs have gotten stronger’", NY Post 10/5/2026.

A few weeks ago, I got an interesting email from Jean Charconnet, referencing a 9/10/2026 LLOG post, noting general issues about the logic of analogies and metaphors, and offering to submit a guest post on the topic.

Philadelphia seems to attract Google Maps weirdness.

Myriam Toua, "Donald Trump's advisers 'urge him to declare martial law' amid latest grim poll", The Mirrorus 9/26/2026: [emphasis added] Martial law in the US would mean the temporary replacement of government and regular law enforcement by a solely milit…

The latest Tank McNamara strip imagines a conversation between referees before today's Ravens versus Cowboys game in Rio: What Cristo Redentor is signaling, visible from near Estádio do Maracanã (though probably not from inside it): How the comic strip ref

From Donald Trump's recent UN speech: Your browser does not support the audio element.

A recent congratulatory email, from a successful scientist to a member of his lab: Teriffic!

At least in British primary schools, according to The Guardian: "‘That’s so AI!’

Today's Frazz: Caulfield substitutes day for way, in the English translation of the Latin phrase "Aut inveniam viam aut faciam", which Wikipedia tells us "has been spuriously attributed to Carthaginian General Hannibal, in response to his generals stateme…

As counterpoint to Scott Alexander's impressive "King Ludd" exploration, consider this thematic image from The Spectator magazine ("The autistocracy: the men on the spectrum who rule our world"), featuring caricatures of Elon Musk, Dario Amodei, and Sam A…

A memorial service for Victor Mair will be held at Swarthmore Friends Meeting (12 Whittier Place, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania) on the afternoon of Saturday, October 10, between 2:00 and 5:00.

In "A correlate of animacy" (9/27/2008) I noted that "A traditional and characteristic example of the role of animacy in English syntax is the way it affects the choice between the two ways of expressing genitive relations, X's Y vs. the Y of X.".

Among the many interesting takes on OpenAI's claimed solution to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, I've been most interested in Sabine Hossenfelder's discussion on YouTube., partly because of the content but mainly because of Google AI's weird t…

Wikipedia's entry on Univerbation tells us that "The univerbating process is epitomized in Talmy Givón's aphorism that 'today's morphology is yesterday's syntax'."

Alaina Demopoulos, "Women are giving their partners the ‘Illiterate Boyfriend’ test: ‘Do your best to pronounce these words’", The Guardian 9/3/2026: There are common non-negotiables we look for in a prospective partner.

…is ACHOO — "Ever sneeze immediately after stepping into the sun?

Dolly Parton's passing inspired Josh Marshall to dive deeper into one of the adjacent "Mysteries of Americana", namely how Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk "hopped off a ship in New York City" at the age of 20, in 1929, and eventually managed to set himself up…

…and speech?

The title of Sal Mercogliano's latest "What's Going on With Shipping?"

Stephen Collins' August 14 comic in the Guardian, "Meet David Advance Plus+, genius of toothpaste marketing", starts with these four panels: David Advanced Plus+ introduces himself: And he magically transforms the product line: What they are, obviously, is

The latest xkcd: The mouseover title: ""You legs may have a comparative advantage at running, but we arms have a competitive advantage at swinging hammers, so unless you accept that we're the dominant limbs and stop hogging the oxygen, that running advant…

[SORRY for previously writing "the Economist" instead of "the Guardian" "-)…] Steven Collins' January 9 cartoon from the Guardian starts with a man's sudden displacement after he places a simple fast-food order: He ends up in a secret war room — because s…

Paul Krugman's latest Substack echoes Winston Churchill's famous 1940 speech: President Trump's remark about military intervention in the bond markets actually happened — here's a transcription in context: Q: Did you direct Secretary Bessent to intervene…

Today's SMBC: The mouseover title: "I was trying to figure out why cavemen sometimes do and sometimes don't drop prepositions.